After many days of hard work, after over a year of full time dedication to help startups and techies like you, today AC reached a major milestone: ArabCrunch.NET First Online Social Platform in the Arab World focused on Startups & The Technology Industry. With this announcement, the social platform, was what you the passionate startup and tech community wanted AC to develop for you Â and as I mentioned back on April that AC will do it! when I wrote about the ecosystem that we need to have in order to help grow the tech industry in this region and turn our economies into knowledge based economy. Today Our promise is delivered, Here is the ecosystem in one place :)

ArabCrunch.NET, Helping The Arab World Innovate

ArabCrunch Group Extends Technological Reach with First Social Network in the Arab World focused on the technology industry

Amman, Jordan and Silicon Valley, CA – Tuesday, November 10, 2009 – ArabCrunch Group announced today closing a round of funding and the launch of ArabCrunch.NET, the first social network dedicated to creating an environment that fosters innovation, entrepreneurship and mentorship for Arab entrepreneurs throughout the world. ArabCrunch.NET offers a dynamic platform for collaboration amongst the various stakeholders within the technological ecosystem from Berkeley to Bahrain.

“ArabCrunch.NET will facilitate knowledge transfer and enable veterans from Silicon Valley to work with and mentor young talent from the MENA region,” said Bassel Yassine Ojjeh, a former Senior Vice President of Yahoo!, Inc. USA, a serial entrepreneur and Board Member of ArabCrunch Group, who led the round of funding. “We’ve built ArabCrunch.NET to fuel innovation, create a knowledge based society and an environment for job creation in the region that will serve high tech professionals throughout the 22 Arab countries and the western hemisphere.”

“We’re thrilled at the opportunity to be the first dedicated group that focuses on accelerating the innovation cycle both here in Amman and throughout the Arab world,” said Gaith Saqer, Founder of ArabCrunch Group. “Ever since we launched ArabCrunch.com in 2008, we have been committed to finding the most compelling technological innovations that impact the Arab world – this next chapter allows us to help foster collaboration on a scale never seen before in our region. We have built a social platform that connects participants and helps them find crucial resources, build strategic partnerships and promote services.”

Since it’s unveiling in 2008, ArabCrunch.com has grown to one of the most widely read technology blogs in the Arab world with over 30,000 monthly visits. Founded on the principle of “professional blogging,” ArabCrunch.com has become the primary source of information about the latest technological advancements relevant to the Arabic world. An Arabic version based on “citizen journalism” was launched last month and has met with great success.

– END-

About ArabCrunch Group:
ArabCrunch Group’s mission is to inform, impact, inspire and create an Arab centric technology ecosystem that delivers information, and connects Arab entrepreneurs both in the region and throughout the world via its properties, ArabCrunch.com, ArabCrunch.NET and ArabCrunch.com/ar. About Arab Crunch. The mission of ArabCrunch.NET is to help accelerate entrepreneurship and technology innovation in the Arab world by delivering an online social platform that connects participants of the technology ecosystem.
ArabCrunch.NET is the first online social platform dedicated to connect and support technology companies, entrepreneurs, techies, scientists, academia and investors in the Arab world. ArabCrunch.NET is a project from ArabCrunch, the publisher of arabcrunch.com and ArabCrunch Arabic Edition.

About Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship:
The QRCE is a non-profit, non-governmental organization established in October 2004 and is now a complement of El Hassan Science City. The center’s mission is to support economic development through offering a package of services to promote excellence and market technology. The centre particularly targets college students, researchers, inventors and initiators to enhance and build their personal capacities. QRCE offers this group consultation and works to develop their sense of excellence and initiative through a set of programs including Queen Rania National Entrepreneurship Excellence Competition, Technology Commercialization Program, Connect Jordan and Princess Sumaya University for Technology’s Entrepreneurship Society (DART).

Talking during his inauguration of the country’s third Media and telecommunications convergence conference 2006, Kurdi added that Jordan is expected to announce the new policy of the sector during the fourth quarter of the current year.

The conference, which witnessed the participation of over 300 regional and local key players representing the media and telecom sectors in the MENA area, was web cast to around 50 paying subscribers over the Internet for the first time through Join Vision, and was organized by the Arab Advisor Group.

Kurdi said the convergence of communications and media has been widely developed, especially following the upsurge of digital communications technologies, and the expansion in the evolution of modern technology.”

“We believe Media & Telecommunications Convergence offers a great opportunity that Jordan and rest of the region can not ignore, and should make great stride to leverage, for the benefit of their respective economies and people,” he added.

The two-day conference had various interactive sessions in addition to presentations delivered by local and regional key players from telecom and media. The conference speakers were all top executive and decision makers from major operators in the region.
<!–[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]–>

Chris Forster from the London based ‘Inside Satellite’, which offers new media newsletter, told The Star “I wanted my presentation to open people minds, because we are all trapped by our experience, and I wanted to provoke the delegates to think outside the box, look at what is happening in media and telecom.”

“In telecom there must be more to life than just ring tone and I believe content is what will make the difference,” he added. “I wanted people to understand what may be around the corner of an iPod type device capable of storing 50,000 or 100,000 tunes, or a video device which carried the top 5,000 Hollywood films… I want people to see that today’s business model is going to change. ”

Forster also said that the convergence between the media and telecom is happening today and that telecom needs the content the TV supplies.

In his speech Forster discussed “Mobile TV: current state and prospects”, and he tackled the recent emergence of content materials produced at home by young people and broadcast over the internet to other young people.

Talking about the conversion in Middle East he said, “today it is embryonic and many lesson have yet to be learned.”

Tarek Ayntrazi, Lebanese Future TV’s General Manager, told The Star “it is very interesting conference, I was supposed to leave at the first day but I postpone it for the next day because the conference is interesting.”

Talking about the benefits of the conference he told The Star “we as media –people- will better understand the telecom operator’s vision in conversion and get to know some of the leaders and future leader of the industry.”

Asked about his opinion regarding conversion, he said “video and audio content provided to mobile subscribers via the hand set is a new delivery system, in which we are exploring this opportunity.”

Prof. Ibrahim A. Kadi, Senior Advisor for Communications and Information Commission (CITC) of Saudi Arabia, the telecom regulatory body, told the Star” I am very pleased with the level of members and the quality of interaction they all are professionals, there were a lot of interesting presentations, and lots of interesting discussions.”

He added” we attended the conference basically to draw attention to new business opportunities in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is the largest telecom market for fixed, mobile and the internet.”

In his speech he talked about the liberalization of telecom in Saudi Arabia, where he mentioned that CICT has opened the fixed market for competition for the first time this year, in addition to offer additional mobile license.

Onno Bos form TeliaSonera a telecom operator in Netherlands, who was one of the delegates, told the Star “the conference is good because most of the regional players are present, it gives you an insight of where the market is, and how the parties act on the deregulated market.”

Talking about business opportunities in Jordan and the region he told The Star” we are interested in doing business in Middle East and Jordan, like offering our international services to the regional players like international voice termination, IP (internet protocol) transit –VOIP (voice over IP) and Internet access to Internet Service Providers (ISPs) capacity and specific mobile service like GRX (GPRS rooming exchange), and data rooming MMS (Multimedia messaging service)

Last year was the year of social networks, namely Facebook has been its star. With an average yearly growth rate of 550% .

World wide faeebook is closing on myspace #1 lead in social networking arena to equal it to around 100 million unique visits a month. It is in Alexa’s top ten, and it is number one world wide photo sharing website more than flickr.

In the arab world facebook become number on social network beating Hi5. Facebook now is on top 5 most visited websites in the arab world which include: Google, yahoo, msn, and maktoob.

On the business professional SN front, linkedIn and Xing has grown a lot, Linkedin remain a leader with around 17 millions profile, with a growth rate at an average of 182 percent yearly.

Facebook and Bebo charges only 13 cents per thousand times that an ad is ‘served,’ or CPM. Yahoo’s average CPM is estimated at $13. Video ads on Myspace is $25 per thousand showings while CBS charges $50 and NBC charges as much as $75 for the same number of views.

Why is consumers Social networking Ad rate is lower, I think because Advertising in consumer social networks is less effective to other web sites.

According to an online marketer in the Arab world who ran ads in faebook, facebook click through rate (CTR) is the lowest in the industry, the obvious reason is that users are busy interacting with their friends than looking into ads, the other reason is that ad location is not visible to the user, they are even on the left side under the app menu or at the bottom of the page.

Fox Interactive gets 27 percent of its revenue from an ad deal between Google and MySpace forged in August 2006. A deal in which Rupert Murdoch gets $900 million, the guaranteed revenue Google promised MySpace through 2010. So now google is loosing money with myspace ad deal.

Contextual text ads to users’ Personal profiles are not as effective as contextual text ads on search or a news website.

On the other hand LinkedIn has a CPM rate of $75. why? LinkedIn caters to a professional business audience and so the advertisers have a narrower business audience.

LinkedIn also has contextual text ads from google’s ad sense, which I found interesting where I some times I click on these links. Because they are related to things in my profile and business interest, some thing I would like to increase my knowledge about.sometimes locate a competitor.

How many times did an ad got your attention and how many times did you click an ad across social networks.

Please leave your comments and tell us about

your ad experience across social networks………………….

UP DATE: there are new reports that backup my assertions, and i will post them soon.

NetworkSolutions has suspended the domain of the Dutch MP Geert Wilder a right wing extremist , where he was planning to publish a very controversial anti Quran movie.

Network solutions said it got many complaints about this website and it is studying them.

The message that appears when trying to access the website is :

“This site has been suspended while Network Solutions is investigating whether the site’s content is in violation of the Network Solutions Acceptable Use Policy. Network Solutions has received a number of complaints regarding this site that are under investigation”

Until Sunday the website was showing a picture of the Quran’s cover on a black background with a word Fitna written over it.

Wilder was planning to publish his video before April this year on the Internet where he criticizes Islam and the Quran, saying that Quran is a hate book and should be banned. He got a lot of criticism and warnings from different religious and political groups, who said this movie will spark violent objections in many parts of the world.

It is worth mentioning that the Dutch government tried to persuade the MP not to publish his movies in fear of backlash.

Google recently has 2 software eng. position open now. In their posting they said they want them to be fluent in Arabic to build new application in Arabic tailored to the Arab world. This move by google signal a huge commitment by google to the Arab world, and soon we will see more services from Google in Arabic and tailored to the Arab world. Google’s current Arabized offerings are: search, blogger, news, and gmail. if you know any more Arabized services by Google please mention them on a comment.
The 2 google’s job posts are:

Google Engineering Site Director (Arabic Fluent) – Middle East Region

Google is looking for a highly technical, hands-on Engineering Site Director to drive software initiatives for the Middle East/Arab World in a location(s) to be determined.
As the most senior engineer for Google in the region, the Engineering Site Director will be the face for Google’s Arabic engineering effort in the Arab World.

The Engineering Site Director will be responsible for the overall planning, execution and success of regionally focused projects (for the Middle East) that will have the potential for global impact. In
addition to leading an initially small engineering team, the Engineering Site Director will work closely with Google’s senior management team as well as local officials and Universities and
professional organizations.

Please note that engineering management at Google is technical, i.e., candidates are expected to have a strong track record of technical accomplishments in addition to management accomplishments. Consequently a candidate must posses a strong and broad background in most aspects of Computer Science.
Candidates will be asked technical questions during your interviews.

Google / (Arabic Fluent) Experienced Software Engineers – Middle East

The Software Engineering positions require at least 7+ years work experience, experience developing web-based applications, expertise in data structures, algorithms, and complexity analysis, fluency in one or more of C, C++, Java, fluency in one of more of Shell, PHP, Perl or Python, solid working knowledge of Unix, preferably Linux, SQL and MySQL are a plus. Applicants must have BA/BS in Computer Science, MS or PhD.

I worked in several IT companies in Jordan and dealt with few programmers. So I can sum my impression about them as the following:

1- if they know programming that is what they know, they might be good at it but they are not creative.

2-Lack of entrepreneurial spirit:

how many programmers took the risk andstarted up their own businesses. Very few and if they did it would be custom app development.

3- lack of vision:

most developers in Jordan do not have a vision of how technology and the web will evolve.

4- I never know or heard about any Jordanian programmer who founded or confounded world class IT business like a web site or a web 2.0 business. If any did they mostly were a localized copycat of US website or a software.

5- working with Jordanian freelancers is a nightmare:

they promise you and then you get nothing. I dealt with many liars. In Arabic:Nasabeen.

6- Arrogance no risk taking:

if you want to cofound a company with a developer, he will think that he is every thing, and that his work is the most important and nothing else. This is wrong, in USA there are tons of startups every day, why not all of them succeed? What maters most is the idea how much value you offer to the end user compared to your competitor, that includes usability. Execution that includes: the development process and management. Marketing and PR: can you market your service in near zero cost to a wide audience to acquire the initial customer base critical for your future success, funding: to pay for your costs. Most of the ingredients of success is not done by a developer but by the management, I am not saying programmers are not important they are, one bad programmer can cause your business to be destroyed with a serious bug in the code that for ex: enable a hacker to delete your data base, but programmers are an important part of the process.

7- Too much emphasis in work security:

well it is natural that every one needs to secure a present income, but most programmers are not welling to spend their spare time innovating the next big think, they are not welling to partner with a business skilled person and start something from scratch because there is no enough funding. They will come to you after you secure the funding.

8- fact numbers 8: most IT companies who are world class businesses with 100s of billion market cap today, started from scratch some with 2 thousand $ or less seed investments, yahoo was founded at the dorms of Stanford uni, same for google,same for Dell who started with 1000 $ investment. Same with Sun, while HP started from the garage. Same with Apple. Myspace, also facebook started from the dorm .for none IT starbucks started with few thousands investment in one location, now it has thousands of shops around the world with billion of revenues.

How did these startup succeed while other did not?

1-value:

A-New product: they might have came with a new product: ex yahoo:a directory that helps to find websites- where to go across the web.

B-Improvements on existing products: yahoo directory was not enough to find what you want from the web, so google came with algorithm of a search engine and launched it services, now google is at least 5 times bigger than yahoo with around 150 billion market cap. Another example of improvements is facebook: social networking was there with friendster then myspace, but facebook improved the service with usable clean features. ( first facebook was only for Harvard students, provided a directory for students, something that makes Harvard students stay connected and help them get to know each other, a value nto offered else where for them, and then it evolved) so it started as a niche offering unlike mypsace targeting masses of teenagers, facebook initially targeted students and kept improving – innovating until now it has almost the same unique visit to myspace globally, while myspace lacked continues innovation for years it is playing now catch up game with facebook features.

2-Business model:

PC where there but what Michel Dell came with is a new business model: customize PC to each individual and use 1 to 1 marketing through mail, build to order, means he had almost zero inventory a huge cost cut, these things initially provided him with a competitive advantage to other PC vendors. While google monetized its free search engine with non intrusive contextual text ads which are effective for both advertisers and the end users.

3-Marketing and PR:

hotmail was the first web-based email, which is by it self represent 1st mover advantage, but what it did is it used Viral marketing: using your customers to bring more customers, which means free advertising for you, and a more effective way to acquire new customers, Hotmail embedded a small message at the end of every email that says: -get your free email from hotmail click here-, this term was coined by Tem Draper. The VC behind hotmail.

hotmail was sold to Microsoft for 500 million.

Another example Facebook used: address book email gapping to virally acquire more users. Also all these companies had a great PR strategy which helped them create a buzz and excitement about their products for an almost zero cost.

4-Management:

These companies had strong management people.

5-Funding:

Millions of Dollars in Funding were secured to these companies from VCs after they developed their products and acquired an initial customer base. Facebook first after few month of launching it raised 500 thousand $, then later millions up to 35 million, and recently up to 700million making its value to 15 billion.

Bottom-line: if you stumble upon a person with great idea -like me-, and with knowledge how to reach out customers, partner with him and work day and night to make it happen, you might in few years make millions of dollars

Tune in I will post a more detailed post in my blog about the ingredients of success for the successful IT companies. And soon I will launch a web 2.0 and mobile 2.0 blog in Arabic.